So for the past two days, my e-booklet Long March of the Koalas (And other creationist adventures) has been near the top of Amazon’s best-seller lists in a couple of sub-sub-sub-categories.
It’s their No. 1 book in “Humor > Religion” — a rather thin category where one-fourth of the top 20 books, perpetually, are different versions of Benjamin Hoff’s gentle 1983 book The Tao of Pooh. The religious humor genre is apparently not a hot market in publishing. (Volume 1 of The Anti-Christ Handbook is still ranked as the No. 30 book in this category — just ahead of the Nun Bowling book — and that’s based on selling a handful of copies each week.)
But Long March is also near the top today in Amazon’s list of best-selling books about “Science and Religion.” It has some good company in that category, and it’s an honor to see something I wrote listed alongside the latest book from Bill Nye (the Science Guy):
On the other hand, seeing my handiwork listed alongside Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife isn’t quite as cool. That book, I think, is the second-biggest reminder these days that being a neurosurgeon doesn’t entail being smart about other things.
I’d also guess that Long March of the Koalas owes its brief — hopefully not too brief — appearance in these rankings due to its low, low price of just 99 cents.*
My “best-selling” e-book takes its title from one of the essays in the collection, originally a 2009 post here, wherein I boggle at the notion that prominent young-Earth creationist Ken Ham is a native Australian. Here’s a taste of that post:
I just can’t fathom how someone could have lived in Australia believing the world is only 6,000 years old. There are all sorts of things you can’t do while believing that (like, for instance, going outside on a clear night), but living in Australia would seem near the top of that list. The indigenous Australians have stories, dances and paintings that are far older than 6,000 years. They’ve got jokes that are older than that.
But even if Ham managed to spend his years in his native land without ever encountering or learning of the ancient cave paintings in Kimberley, he surely must have seen or at least been aware of all those wonderful native species that every kid here in America learns about when we study Australia in elementary school – the kangaroos and koalas, bandicoots, echidnas and platypuses.
So how does Ken Ham account for these wonderful creatures? His abbreviated timeline of the universe has Noah’s ark landing on Mount Ararat in Asia Minor along about 2300 BCE. Then what? Do the koalas walk to Australia from there?
Seems rather a long walk. Followed, I suppose, by rather a long swim. All without encountering a single eucalyptus tree – the basis for the koalas’ exclusive diet – until they arrived at their destination on the other side of the world.
If you ever encounter someone who, like Ham, believes the earth is only 6,000 years old, don’t bother asking them about the Long March of the Koalas, or about kangaroos or island biogeography more generally. Such questions will only prompt their fight-or-flight instinct to kick in and that doesn’t lead anywhere constructive. (They can get quite nasty when cornered, baring their teeth, snarling and getting elected to school boards.)
As you can imagine, I originally went through several variations of that title: The Long March of the Bandicoots. The Great Trek of the Wombats. Swimming for Eucalyptus. Hopping from Ararat. We focus-grouped all of those before, in the end, going with Koalas because the image of a small band of koalas bravely setting forth on an epic, global adventure seemed funniest and most endearingly absurd.
Also, I didn’t want to contend with the cover art for The Long March of the Sydney Funnel-Web Spiders.
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* And I’m riding the royalties gravy train that nets me a cool pre-tax 35 cents on every copy sold. So if sales of this book, say, quadruple, then keep at that level for the next three-four years, I’ll be set. Maybe not enough to go chasing that dentist appointment I’ve long dreamed of, but more than enough to splurge on the name-brand Sensodyne toothpaste.
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